Before I sat down to write this I asked myself, “What can I share about my recent experiences that might help people the most?”, so the following is just straight from the heart about how I’m dealing with some of the challenges I’ve been having. `And my wish for you is that you’ll see that it’s really normal at times to feel out of control, overwhelmed, stressed or worried as you push at your edges, step into your ‘adventure zone’ and go for your audacious goals!
In fact, if you’re setting yourself BIG goals, you should plan and be ready for your inner saboteur to stick a spanner or two in the works!
Stepping up…
My BIG goal is that in October I’m going to be running my Brand from the Heart Online programme for the second time, and this time I mustered up the courage to ask a number of joint venture partners to help me promote it to a much wider audience making myself much more visible – EEK!.
I was over the moon and felt very humbled when people said “Yes!”.
We’ve all got our own edges and different challenges that make us uncomfortable depending on our personal histories, and although I’m confident about the results people will get on the programme because the feedback from the pilot was so positive, asking for help is most definitely not something that comes easily to me. Somewhere in my school days I picked up the belief that other people couldn’t be trusted to watch my back, and if I wanted to get something done then I would have to do it myself.
Obviously if I want to grow my business this is a really unhelpful belief to have, and this is where the saying, “Feel the fear and do it anyway”, comes from, so I pushed through the discomfort to ask for support, and now I’m really excited and grateful to be working with my wonderful jv partners because this could make such a difference to my business and take it to another level. So it matters to me that it goes well for me and for them.
Having already run the programme once I assumed that this time around the whole process would be a lot easier, after all, I have it all created, which took most of the work last time. The bit I was unfamiliar with was working with other people’s marketing schedules and some technical stuff, but all that seemed straightforward enough on the surface and I was feeling quietly confident.
But what looked like it should have been an easy process seemed to have no end of hiccups that got me into a right old flap! Technology took ten times longer to sort out, communication has been testing, it knocked my self confidence to be able to organise something that should have been easy, and I managed to wind myself up into a tight ball of stress, losing all sense of balance and calm!
So what the hell was going on?
We are 100% responsible for everything that shows up in our lives
It’s my absolute belief that our thoughts create our reality. What we consistently put focus and emotional energy into manifests – whether we consider it positive or negative, so we are personally responsible for everything that shows up in our lives. Having had some time for reflection about all the obstacles that turned me into a little stress monkey, it suddenly struck me that this was where my inner saboteur had found one of my limiting beliefs and was using it to try and stop me from moving forward.
As I said before, this is normal. When we commit to our dreams and risk going outside our comfort zones in pursuit of them we are entering an unknown land. While this lights up the heart, it sends the ego mind into a panic because it sees the unknown as dangerous.
It’s the ego’s job to keep us safe in the known, and so it will throw negative head talk into your consciousness to try and keep you from harm, and if it’s a big scary thing you’re doing it will try and hound you all day and keep you awake all night, with the purpose of getting you to step back from the edge of the precipice.
Once these negative thoughts take hold of your attention they start to adversely affect your emotions, which cause changes in your physiology giving you the symptoms of stress – tensions, knotted stomach, headaches, nausea, etc. And boy, does that feel REAL, which only goes to strengthen your belief!
Then, because you’re constantly sending this out into the universe you start to draw to you negative experiences that match the frequency of your thoughts – law of attraction – which creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.
We are NOT our thoughts
But the truth is, we are not our thoughts. Our true state is pure creative potential, an individual spark of divine consciousness, and we are capable of creating anything we truly desire if it’s in our hearts. The ego brilliantly gives us the resistance we need to push against to help us grow stronger by bringing the ‘not truth’ of who we are to the surface to be healed – rather like resistance training at the gym to build muscles.
And when you take time to reconnect with the heart and what has passion and meaning for you it will help you refocus on what you do want, guiding your thoughts to be more positive, which will draw positive experiences to you.
Get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable
So whenever you go for a juicy goal that really stretches you, get yourself prepared for the tussle between heart and ego. Get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable and find what you need to do to help you clear the negative head talk, whether that be to see a therapist, do some journaling or maybe get the endorphins flowing by going for a run. Work out what shifts your energy and do that.
If problems come out of left field try and stay detached from them and keep focused on what you do want, even if it feels a real threat in your body. To be forewarned is to be forearmed, and once you remember that it’s the ego just doing its job it will soon lose its power of control over you.
The ups and downs are all part of the exciting journey, and anyone who makes significant growth steps goes through this. How much you enjoy it depends on how much you can let go and go with it!
You just have to remember – YOU ARE AMAZING, with unlimited potential – you are NOT your thoughts!
I’d really love to hear if this resonates with you, so please leave a comment or share it with someone you think it might help.
Your article really resonates with me, and definitely a timely reminder! For a long time I was one of those who stayed in the safety of the known, and listened to my mind telling me that I couldn’t take that leap of faith and launch my own pet care business. But hey, guess where I am now? Two weeks post launch, with three new clients and regular bookings. Throughout August and into September, I’d been going flat out setting up the company and building my website, and I’m really proud of what I’ve achieved and all the creativity that was flowing through me. This creativity spilled over into my other freelance work (the stuff that’s keeping the bills paid for the moment) but over the last week I’ve hit a bit of a brick wall and all my creative juices seem to have dried up! And of course, that’s when those little voices in my head start piping up telling me I’ve taken on too much, I’m not good enough to do the task in hand, I’ll never get it finished etc etc. Thank you for reminding me that I am more than capable of completing this work and it will be a flippin’ good report when I’ve finished it! Time to tell those voices to shut up, focus on positive thoughts and I’m sure my creativity will come flooding back.
You’ve absolutely got it, Sarah! The creative juices will come back. Sounds like you’re doing amazingly well! Well done! Remember to give yourself space and time to fill up again and be alert for the inspiration that will get the momentum going again 🙂